My name is Gene Tatum. I am sixty-one years old. I live in Jackson, Mississippi. I have been riding for thirty years, since I was thirty-one, which means I came to this life later than most but have made up for the late start with consistency. I work as a building inspector for the city. I have been doing that for twenty-three years. I have a wife named Faye. I have two adult daughters, both of whom ride, which Faye says is my fault and I say is my greatest accomplishment, and we are both correct.
I have been a member of the Delta Iron MC for twenty-one years.
I wear my cut every time I ride, which is most days weather permits. The vest has accumulated a particular history over twenty-one years — the chapter patch, the rocker, the rank tab I earned seven years ago, several ride pins, a memorial patch for a brother we lost in 2019, and a small circular patch near the bottom left that says USMC, because I did two years in the Marines before the building inspection career and I have not yet decided whether that was the best decision I ever made or the second best, after the bike.
I am familiar with being looked at.
Thirty years of riding in the South, twenty-one years in a cut, six feet even, a gray beard that Faye has given up asking me to trim — I am aware of what I look like when I walk into a room. I have made my peace with the first four seconds. Most people catch up eventually. Some don’t. That’s their business.
Last month I was riding back from a weekend run — three days, four of us, Gulf Coast and back, the kind of trip that restores something that gets depleted by ordinary weeks. I stopped at a rest area on I-20 east of Meridian. Early afternoon, warm, the kind of October day Mississippi does well.
I was at a picnic table with a bottle of water when I noticed the boy.
He was maybe nine. Sitting at the table adjacent to mine while his parents — a man and woman, thirties, a minivan in the lot with a car seat visible in the window — were at the vending machines maybe thirty yards away. He had a book open in front of him but he was not reading it. He was looking at me.
I have been looked at by nine-year-olds before. They generally look for a moment and then look away when they realize they’ve been caught. This boy did not look away. He looked at me with the specific focused attention of a child who has decided to think carefully about something.
I nodded at him.
He nodded back. Very serious about it.
Then he said, “What do the patches mean?”
I looked down at my vest. I looked back at him.
I said, “Which one?”
He said, “All of them.”
I said, “That would take a while.”
He said, “I have time. My parents are getting snacks.”
So I told him.
I walked him through the vest. Not everything — some things are not for a nine-year-old at a rest stop — but the things that had stories attached to them that I could tell.
I told him about the chapter patch and what a chapter was. I told him about the USMC patch and what the Marines had been for me — two years of learning that I was capable of more than I had thought, which is the thing the Marines actually teach you underneath all the other things they teach you. I told him about the memorial patch — I told him that was for a friend named Louis who had died and that I wore it so I would think about Louis when I rode, which I did, every time I was on the bike.
He listened with the particular attention of children who have not yet learned to pretend to listen while thinking about something else.
When I finished, he was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “Can I ask you something?”
I said, “Go ahead.”
He said, “Do you ever get scared? On the motorcycle?”
I thought about this. I said, “Sometimes. When the road is wet, or when somebody in a car does something I didn’t expect. Yeah. Sometimes.”
He nodded.
He said, “Then why do you keep doing it?”
I sat with that question for a moment.
It is not a complicated question on the surface. Any rider has a version of the answer. The freedom, the road, the community, the feeling of it. I have said all of those things to people who ask why I ride and they are all true.
But a nine-year-old at a rest stop on I-20 asking it with that specific seriousness — then why do you keep doing it — was asking something slightly different. He was not asking about freedom or community. He was asking about the relationship between fear and choice. He was asking: if something scares you, why do you keep choosing it?
I said, “Because the things worth doing usually have some fear in them. And if I only did the things that didn’t scare me, I’d have missed most of what mattered.”
He looked at me for a moment.
He said, “Like what?”
I said, “Like asking a girl to marry me. Like having kids. Like staying in a job that was hard when it would have been easier to quit.” I paused. “The bike’s the same thing. Some mornings I don’t feel like going out. Some roads are wet. Some days it’s cold and I’d rather stay home. But I go. Because the going is worth more than the staying home.”
He was quiet for a second.
Then he said, “My dad won’t do things that scare him.”
He said it matter-of-factly. Not with cruelty, not with judgment. Just as an observation. The observation of a nine-year-old who has been watching his father for nine years and has drawn a conclusion.
I did not say anything about his father. That was not my place.
I said, “Different people find their courage in different ways. Some people find it later.”
He nodded. He looked at his book.
His parents came back with snacks. His mother looked at me, registered the vest, and put her hand briefly on her son’s shoulder in the way parents do when they are trying to reestablish proximity without making it obvious.
The boy looked at me one more time before he stood up.
He said, “Thanks for telling me about the patches.”
I said, “Thanks for asking.”
He went with his parents to their minivan. I watched them pull out of the rest stop.
I sat at that picnic table for a while after they left.
Then why do you keep doing it.
I have been riding for thirty years. I have answered questions about the motorcycle and the vest and the club more times than I can count, from more kinds of people than I can catalogue. I have never answered a question that made me sit still at a rest stop picnic table and look at the road for twenty minutes afterward.
A nine-year-old boy with a book he wasn’t reading asked me why I choose the things that scare me, and I told him the truth, and in telling him the truth I remembered it myself in a way I had let go unremembered for a while.
The things worth doing usually have fear in them.
I know that. I have known it for thirty years.
Sometimes you need a nine-year-old at a rest stop in October to say it back to you so you can hear it fresh.
I finished my water. I got back on the bike. I had an hour and a half to Jackson.
It was a good hour and a half.
It was the kind of riding you do when you have just remembered why you ride.